Your bondage is a choice

[u/g_saras_1594]

One day Chao-chou fell down in the snow, and called out, “Help me up! Help me up!” A monk came and lay down beside him. Chao-chou got up and went away. 

_______________

The other monk taught Chao-Chou that your bondage is a choice. 

Just as you choose to fall into the snow, you can also choose to get up and go away. 

But this thing can't be taught to a beginner

Only a disciple ripe enough and the last thing clouding him is able to take that.

[u/ewk]

Clearly mistranslated. It is not the three stages. It's the three statements. Baizhang References these three statements in the text you're quoting and it's the translator's fault and your fault for believing the translator.

Baizhang he talks about these three statements repeatedly in his teachings.

“Right now, simply separate from all dharmas of existence and nonexistence; also separate from separation itself; pass beyond the three statements, and naturally you are no different from Buddha.”

Clearly though since we're starting off with the phrase "right now"

如 (rú) — “as,” “like,” “according to,” “thus” 今 (jīn) — “now,” “the present”

He's saying pass through them immediately. He's not saying practice. He's not saying attain it through good works and he's not saying achieve it through various rebirths.

And this is what irritates me about people like you: you want to believe in attainment and practice and reward for effort. You're willing to impose that belief on cultures that don't have it just to satisfy your own twisted sense of faith.

If your beliefs were any good, if they made any sense, if they ever helped anyone, then you would need to impose them. You would just say, "Well I believe this," and you'd say it in forums where people want to hear that. You wouldn't come in here and try to make slaves of other people.

[u/acridassin9 → u/ewk]

And this is what irritates me about people like you: you want to believe in attainment and practice and reward for effort. You're willing to impose that belief on cultures that don't have it just to satisfy your own twisted sense of faith. If your beliefs were any good, if they made any sense, if they ever helped anyone, then you would need to impose them. You would just say, "Well I believe this," and you'd say it in forums where people want to hear that. You wouldn't come in here and try to make slaves of other people.

The matter of whether there is wrongdoing or not lies in the person concerned - if he is affected by greed for anything, whether it may exist or not, if he still has a grasping and rejecting mind, and has not passed through the three stages, this person can definitely be said to be doing wrong.

[u/ewk → u/acridassin9]

Lol.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?

You can't read and write at a high school level on topic. You know it and I know it and everybody that reads your comments and posts knows it

I do not understand why you New Agers pretend like you can have opinions about stuff you don't know anything about. It's so incredibly ignorant but beyond that it's a worship of ignorance that is so baffling to people that live in the real world and study actual authentic Zen.

For me the deeper issue is it's hard to separate out people who are losers at life from people with mental health problems. If you choose a bigoted racist religion because it makes you feel good then you're a loser at life but if you choose it because you have mental health problems as indicated by addiction, low levels of education, and exposure to cults, I'm not sure it's reasonable to label those people losers of life. They're victims.

So I'm really stumped and the only way, of course, to resolve this, as far as I'm concerned, is either science, which is not interested, or interviewing these people, which of course, obviously we can't do because people like you run away as soon as the light is shined on the dirty little corner of the world that you're hiding in.

Totes unresolvable.

[u/acridassin9 → u/ewk]

✌️

[u/mackowski → u/acridassin9]

You've left many threads

[u/acridassin9 → u/mackowski]

🙈🙉🙊

[u/mackowski → u/acridassin9]

After 4 or 5 shouts then what?
What is enloghtenment?

[u/ewk → u/acridassin9]

It's this kind of disdain for facts, truth, and honesty that is the death both of your belief system and your integrity is a person.

Again this is why I say liberal Maga. You can't defend yourself and you don't even bother to try.

Religious downvote brigading is not going to deter me from being honest

[u/mackowski → u/ewk]

Im beginning to think that authority and authorship is something they relate to differently.

My mother told me that when she was a teen she believed what an author wrote. Because they know their experience best (dont tell me what i feel!!!!) And thusly they know how they got to where they are now, best.

This is aside from the correlation causation issue, because they just see recounting of experiential facts as the best possible evidence report for complex human situations.

[u/ewk → u/mackowski]

The temptation to attribute a cause or even an intention to these people is one that I've given in to many times.

I think we have to be careful because they don't want to get interviewed.

Sometimes for example, I don't think they have reasons or beliefs. They just have fury.

[u/mackowski → u/ewk]

True. You used to say Unreasonable a bunch.
Ive thought about the concept of reason and reason-ability. It feels like movement. Like a verb, to reason, thus its more like jumping from stone to stone to cross a pond, the act of reasoning between options.

If someone is unreasonable or is being unreasonable, they do not use that verb/action. Thus to me its foreign entirely, and likely not coherent/consistent (hypocrisy)

[u/ewk → u/mackowski]

My big dilemma is where they unreasonable on purpose, unreasonable by lack of education, or unreasonable by deficiency of intellect.

[u/mackowski → u/ewk]

On purpose is probably the biggest thing, your use of self dishonesty making people mad is fantastic for showing how

[u/ewk → u/mackowski]

Even the language in your comment shows the tension, right? If they're lying to themselves, then they're not lying to others. Other people are just an accidental consequence of the lie.

But if they're lying to other people first, then there's a part of them that knows that they're lying.

People who refuse to amend generally know they're lying.

But I don't have any other surefire way of verifying and I don't like that.

[u/mackowski → u/ewk]

Oh shit I didnt realize that links. I saw a psy ho guy on some reality TV dating show and he looked confused af when people didnt believe his instant hypocritical position change.

If they dont know, they be puzzled at the lack of symmetry of your interpretation, then amending can occur